Depends On Your Butter

Depends what you want, I suppose,

Doesn’t it,

Kids with a conscience

Or count,

Counting the pennies,

Own fortune,

Or cognisant of those

Doing without.

Depends where your

Bread has been buttered,

If jam was an option or not,

If pieces fae windaes was favoured

As three square or four with the drop.

Depends on so many factors,

Depends on memory, I guess,

Depends on whether

You’re fortuned

And want for others no less.

Depends on trying and failing,

On seeing failure as lessons well learned,

Depends on hope, love and sharing,

So dependent on how your butter was churned.

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Safety Net Optional

I never ‘got’ the the circus,

Never got the fascination,

Big tops and clowns,

Never got why waving chairs at lions

Held a crowd.

I never got, the one time I went,

Why trapeze artistes would associate

With such,

The smells, the noise,

Those clowns.

Rather fly high,

Higher,

Touch the sky,

Leap into oblivion,

Risk the fall,

Dare to dive,

Feel the air rush past,

Reach for hands,

Sigh

Upon touch,

Safety net optional.

I got the trapeze.

Always will.

 

 

Credo

Do you believe in laughter held in truth,

In knowing that words spoken find their mark,

That a look, a touch, the gentlest hand may form

A smile that grows within, ignites a spark?

 

Do you believe that gladness grows inside,

Overflows to others open to

Receiving joy as recompense for living

When its trials and labours overwhelm and threaten you?

 

Do you believe that hurting ends in time,

That inner worlds are balanced by all love,

That questions yet unanswered cause a thrill,

Their discoveries a golden treasure trove?

 

Do you believe that somewhere inside light

The heart of matter hides a great reveal,

That nothing happens without cause effect

And perceptions make our own world feel what’s real?

 

Do you believe that logos is the word

Or that words alone confuse a greater thought,

That lips that speak the lies betray the way

And sometimes guidance dwells in what’s not sought?

 

Do you believe in fairies and in trolls,

In monster lochs where hidden depths conceal,

Do you believe in equine wings and angels,

In many wondrous stories though unreal?

 

Do you believe in suspending disbelief

To enter into fantasies that pleasure

While still inside you know factual from dream

But recognise you owe some childlike measure?

 

Do you believe that living is worth living,

That each breath you take admits a purpose here,

That nothing’s yet decided or completed

And that only you can change your greatest fears?

 

Do you believe in worlds you find in books,

In scenes unfolding on the movie screen,

In comic superheroes who astound,

Unveiling attributes too rarely seen?

 

Do you believe the essence of all stories

Conveys some truth distilled to purest form,

That much of what we honour most in tales

Are aspirations we would wish as norm?

 

Do you believe that children hold the key,

That complications thwart our best intentions,

That simplicity and innocence are essential to all meaning

To underwrite and clarify the best of lessons?

 

I do.

 

May Music, Day 15 – Yes! Perfectly Caledonian – with some Dignity

I’m one of these annoying buggers that sing along to a lot of songs. Sometimes even just the ones in my head.

But, singing along and singing along can mean quite different things depending on the occasion.

For this one, think party, people, alcohol imbibed in sufficient quantity to be somewhat reckless in demeanour (pished), end of the night, dj with a smart sense of how to wrap up an evening. Everybody loves everybody else. Oh, yes, everybody loves everybody else. (Except for that wee shite over there that’s asking for a belt in the mush.) Arms around shoulders, linking one to another. Think, swaying in time with stupid grins plastered. Think, starting slowly and then trying to keep up, arms and legs flailing while singing (shouting) along. Timing becomes nothing. Participation is all. Ach, you’d have to be there. And we have, Runrig with ‘Loch Lomond’.

Quieten down for a more melancholy sort of pished and we have, Dougie MacLean with ‘Caledonia’.

Speaking of pished. Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve) and we have, Eddi Reader with ‘Auld Lang Syne’.

And I can’t include Eddi Reader here without including one of my favourites of hers from when she sang with Fairground Attraction. And it’s a different sort of pishing down here. ‘Perfect’.

I had no idea when I began Twindaddy’s 25 days of music challenge how difficult it would prove to be. For a number of reasons. Nor that it would create a monster. I am currently incapable of choosing one song only. But, if you all only listen to one, listen to Dougie MacLean singing ‘Caledonia’. It’s perfect. Yes, for home.

And maybe some ‘Dignity’. Because the two of them kinda go hand in hand.

There’s more to Scotland than all portrayals. Including mine.

 

 

 

Aspirationally Organised

Do you have piles of mail lying around needing to be sorted? No? Good for you. I too would like to be that organised.

I am, what I like to call, aspirationally organised.

But some things! I mean, who wants to pore through piles of crap to get to the bits you need?

So much of what falls through the letter box is just mince.

Most of my important things are done online and I’ve opted not to receive paper billing and notifications by post. So email folders fill up with crap instead. But I file them. See. Organised. Then now and again I go through and dump what I don’t need to keep.

But I also have mail coming in for people that no longer live here. Weans!

So I keep it all until I take the notion to sit with the recycling bin and rip everything to shreds. Very satisfying it is too.

Then it all starts again. And I promise myself to deal with it as soon as it comes in. But I don’t. Aspirational you see.

Anyway, in my last video post I mentioned that one of the reasons that I don’t get round to doing awards is because my admin page looks a bit like my mail piles. Chaotic. I’m not great at categorising posts. Everything gets lumped under ‘thoughts’. Now and again I remember to file them under ‘poems’, ‘love’, etc. But not as often as I should.

The comments get archived. Then I can’t find which ones I need to refer to in order to recall who gave awards. And life is just too short to do these things. And I’m working. And I have weans. And I’m writing. And…..Och, you know. Life. And stuff.

Now, I subscribed to receive Daily Post from WordPress and, now and again, some of the things they publish to help bloggers I think, ‘That’s a good idea. Must save that.’ And I do. Then don’t do anything with them.

See, aspirational again.

But, I can feel spring round the corner. I can. It’s bright here. The days even feel slightly longer. I get all excited at the onset of spring. Like a wee chick just born and prepping to fly. OK. Maybe just a tad too excited there considering it’s still February.

But, I start to think ‘spring cleaning’. And ‘clear outs’. And I get quite pathetically enthusiastic about the whole notion of a clean sweep and new brooms. Getting the picture here?

So, I’m not cleaning the house. Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not spring yet.

But I’m going to attempt to use some of the advice given through the Daily Post.

One of them is to use shortcodes to organise posts and pages.

I sat for hours at it last night. I didn’t even get half way through changing the categories on all those (nearly 700 posts! Eek!) but I did not too badly. Then I set up new pages to pull together posts of a type.

Now I haven’t published them yet. Because I’m not finished.

But I’m a wee bit scared.

Whenever I have a purge of the household and clear out the debris I then find I need the bloody thing I’ve thrown out only a matter of days later.

I’m now shitting bricks here that if I do this wrongly – well there’s code involved! – my blog will disappear into the recycling bin!

And have I saved it anywhere? No. Can you save it anywhere? Buggered if I know.

So I’m treading cautiously here. Ripping up tiny bits of paper as it were. But not actually throwing it out yet.

An inherent risk taker I am not. So, if my blog disappears – is that even possible? – I’ll be starting from the ground up. You didn’t actually think I’d say goodbye, did you?

I’m probably fretting over nothing here. And WordPress has contingency plans for diddies who don’t know what they’re doing. Please say they have.

What I hope it means is that, older posts that I don’t necessarily want to reblog, will be more readily accessible on a given page along with more recent stuff. And readers can go, ‘Oh, I don’t want to read that shite. But this is my kind of thing.’

See, I’m doing it for you. Well, me too. Because I really need to get organised. And I’m feeling quite aspirational. 🙂

 

Now here is some weird shit. I published this. And got an email saying it was. Then I went in to change the letter J to a smile. Why does it do that? And, guess what? It was still in draft form. Unpublished. And this has happened before. This is what I mean. We just don’t know what’s going to happen when we hit ‘publish’. 😉

Fairy Wishes

A fairy in my dreams asked me

Had all my dreams come true.

I looked at her and thought a bit

Then said, as I here I do.

 

‘A lot of what I longed for

I have already here,

My family and love around,

A cup of greatest cheer.

 

The other dreams are in my hands,

I hold them carefully,

I treasure them and nourish them

And then I set them free.

 

If dreams they are to be fulfilled

I have to open hands,

Not so I may drop them

But so they can search the lands

 

That I may have to wander,

The plans I have to make,

The effort that I’ll put in place

So these dreams may not prove fake.’

 

She asked me then and offered

Three wishes I would crave,

I thought some more then smiled at her

And answer thus I gave.

 

‘Three would never satisfy

All I hold inside

And most of what I ask for self

Is really for my pride.

 

If three there are then let me ask

For what I already see,

The health of all my family,

That’s enough for me.

 

The second one I pass along

To others for the same,

Renewal in body, spirit, mind.

Then they can play this game

 

‘And what of number three?’ she said,

‘Now think on carefully.’

‘I would wish that others knew, believed,

They’re the change they have to be.’